COBIE Smulders, perhaps best known as Robin Scherbatsky in the nine year run of TV romantic comedy How I Met Your Mother and as Agent Maria Hill in Avengers Assemble (2012), Captain Ameria: The Winter Soldier (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and in the TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., is the female lead in the new Jack Reacher movie — Never Go Back.

I really like the character of Jack Reacher — I thought he was interesting. He’s sort of like a lone wolf — this violent but honourable character — and I thought it was visually really interesting. That’s transferred into our film a bit because it’s has the same sort of tone and film-noir look to it. It’s like an old Hollywood mystery film. It’s very Americana in its tone — I feel like that’s a filter on your Instagram or something — a throwback to an America of a different time.

What can you tell me about Jack Reacher: Never Go Back?

It’s a sequel but not really. It’s more a second movie and Tom is reprising his role as Jack Reacher but that’s the only thing that’s a continuation from the first. We begin the film where my character has his old job with the 100th Military Police HQ and basically what happens is a flirtation begins over the phone and Jack decides to come into town and take my character out for dinner and when he arrives he finds out that I have been arrested. He believes — after some other suspicious activity that happens — that I am innocent so he comes into jail and breaks me out. For the rest of the movie we are basically on the run from other MP officers and a mysterious group of contract killers.

These are as much as anything Tom Cruise movies, with a capital T and a capital C — were you a fan and how was that first meeting?

Who isn’t a fan of Tom Cruise? He has been in so many amazing movies. I was really into Cocktail when I was younger — probably the most — followed by Top Gun. I didn’t really discover Risky Business until later in life because I was so young when it came out. Rain Man is a frigging amazing movie. He has worked with such amazing directors and filmmakers — people who know so much about creating stories — and his thirst for knowledge is contagious. He’s interested in everything that has to do with filmmaking and willing to share all that information.

Why Tom Cruise is perfect as Reacher1:31

media_cameraJack Reacher: Never Go Back lead actors Tom Cruise and Cobie Smulders attend the fan screening of the movie at the AMC Elmwood in New Orleans on October 16. Picture: Josh Brasted / Getty

As professional as he is — and has professional as you are — is there still something slightly weird about meeting someone who may have been your teenage crush or whose posters you had on your wall?

I don’t know if he was ever my crush — certainly he’s attractive — so it wasn’t that for me. But we got along so well from the beginning that I’d like to think I was very cool. Maybe I wasn’t but I certainly became cooler with time.

He gets a bit of a bad rap sometimes — but I am yet to talk to an actor who has a bad word to say about him. Why is that?

He’s wonderful — he truly is. He’s so welcoming and accommodating, not just to me, but to everybody. We spent a lot of time in the pancake together, which is basically a trailer that is just a gym. So moments like that were pretty fun where you are doing workouts and you’re like ‘what’s happening here? I’m doing a workout with Tom Cruise’. Moments like that when you’re not shooting and sweating really hard, it’s kind of unreal.

media_cameraCobie Smulders and Tom Cruise at the premiere of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back in Shanghai, China, on October 12. Picture: Emmanuel Wong / Getty

As you said, Jack Reacher is a bit of a lone wolf and there seems to be a bit of a spate of these movies about people who operate outside the law — Taken and John Wick were another couple that did well — why do you think this movies that are part justice, part vengeance are hitting a bit of a sweet spot at the moment?

I don’t know — but it’s a pretty scary time we are living in isn’t it? I think there is something about wanting somebody to come in and fix all the problems of the world and take care of everybody. There is something that is honourable about Jack Reacher. He’s quick and efficient and he gets the job done by whatever means necessary. Maybe there is something in that — someone you know and trust who can come in and make all the bad guys go away.

Clearly your character is no damsel in distress — nor is Agent Hill from the Marvel movies — are action roles becoming better for women?

I think they are becoming more available. There has always been women involved in action movies but they maybe haven’t been as hands on and the cool thing about this one in particular is that we are equals. There were a couple of times on set where Jack/Tom would be doing something and we would all look at each other and go ‘wait, that doesn’t make sense — I would have more knowledge with that, shouldn’t I just do it?’. And because Tom is so generous, he’s be like ‘well yeah, you should do that — just do more’.

media_cameraTom Cruise’s Jack Reacher falls in love with Cobie Smulders’s Susan Turner character and the trouble starts in the new film Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. Picture: Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions

How was the action training for you? Presumably you’d already done quite a bit for the Avengers …

I’d done a little bit for that, but not so much the hand to hand. In The Avengers world a lot of it is superheroes and us humans tend to stand back and let them fight it out. But in this film I was hitting a lot of people with body parts — mine and theirs.

It’s great to see that Wonder Woman is finally being made — were you at one point linked to that part?

(Laughs) Did you go down the Google train? It’s been years now, but Joss Whedon was going to make that movie at one point and he and I are friends and he made some reference to me in some letter or email and whatever Joss says gets repeated a lot on the internet I don’t know if you’ve noticed. So every time she gets mentioned it’s like ‘But you were supposed to be Wonder Woman, right?’ I don’t know if that’s true — Joss was talking in hypotheticals.

A lot of people still know and love you from How I Met Your Mother which will be in re-runs until the end of time — do you miss that?

Very much. It was a great nine years, and I love even the very fact that we got to do a show for nine years. It was really wonderful — the best job I will probably ever get to have. That first year (after we finished) was pretty weird. And after we wrapped the show I was also like ‘wait, movies don’t all shoot in Los Angeles? I have to travel?’ It’s been an adjustment reapproaching the industry with that in mind. But we’re all still in touch — we’re all very nice, normal people but we’re busy, so it’s not as often as we’d like.